by Violet
Violet recaps Season 1 Episode 13 of The Blacklist, titled The Cyprus Agency, where Red gives Keen a case about a crooked adoption agency just as she and Tom are getting things ready for the baby that they are adopting! Following the recap, Violet shares her thoughts about the episode.
Episode Recap of The Blacklist, Season 1 Episode 13: The Cyprus Agency
- A woman in a hospital gown wanders down the street and tells a police officer “They took my baby.” A man drives up, kills the police officer, and takes the woman. Liz tells Tom that she’s decided to stay home with their baby for a little while.
- Red informs Keen about an adoption agency, the Cyprus Agency, that steals children and adopts them out. Keen visits David and Wendy Roland, to whom the next baby will be delivered, and asks for their help. Keen and Ressler listen in as the Rolands meet with the Cyprus Agency’s lawyer, Ted Caldwell. When Keen and Ressler try to approach Caldwell for questioning, he backs away into the street and gets hit by a bus.
- Red’s associate, Teddy, reports that Malik is clean. Red further questions her on his own. She asks him to let her go back and figure out who the mole is. Keen and Ressler enter the Cyprus Agency and begin investigating it. Keen decides to wait on asking Cooper for time off with the baby when he reprimands Malik for being late due to her sick daughter.
- Keen, Ressler, and Malik collect DNA from the children adopted out by the Cyprus Agency, but find no match for missing or abducted children. Red tells her to run the DNA again, but this time to look for relatives. Red warns Keen not to go through with the adoption if she has even one doubt about her husband.
- The DNA search turns up 5 matches for women who went missing in college, and they determine the women got pregnant after they went missing. Malik sneaks into Cooper’s office and takes his FBI ID card, then uses it to obtain classified files. On Caldwell’s laptop, the FBI find files about the Cyprus Agency’s next victim, Charlotte Patterson.
- Keen and Ressler go to Charlotte’s college to bring her into protective custody, but the kidnapper is able to get away with her, despite Keen firing shots at his van. Mallory, the head of the Cyprus Agency, meets up with the kidnapper and kills him.
- A dog digs up the dead body of Kate Ellison, the woman from the beginning of the episode, who died from a single gunshot wound. The coroner reports that Kate was in an induced coma for the past 3 years and has given birth several times. Aram discovers that Mallory attended Harvard under a different name, Lassiter, so Keen and Ressler locate and visit his parents.
- Keen and Ressler learn that the Lassiters adopted Mallory for 16 months when he was 7, but put him back into foster care because he was too troubled and they realized they weren’t ready to adopt a child. Malik hands over her findings to Red. Keen goes with Red to a drug dealer’s house to get info about hydroxipan, a sleeping drug, and they find out that a fertility doctor named Dr. Hadley was one of the few who wrote a prescription for it.
- Keen and Ressler get into a gun fight at the fertility clinic looking for Dr. Hadley. While there, Keen finds a room filled with hospital beds in which pregnant women are sleeping. Mallory attacks Keen, but Ressler shoots Mallory’s arm before he is able to shoot Keen. Upon questioning Mallory, Keen discovers that he is the father of all the children he brokered.
- Liz tells Tom she can’t go through with the adoption because they’re not ready, and that something is not right between them. Red sneaks into Diane’s house and confronts her as being the mole. He kills her despite her claiming to know the truth about what happened “that night” with his family. Tom spends time talking to Jolene. Mr. Kaplan comes to clean up Red’s mess.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 1 Episode 13 of The Blacklist: The Cyprus Agency
At the beginning of this episode, when Lizzie told Tom she had decided to stay home with the baby for a little while, my first thought was, “Hm, so Tom finally got what he wanted.” It had seemed for awhile that he was trying to use any and every excuse to get her away from work for awhile, even when it didn’t involve the baby. Since we still don’t know who Tom really is, we also don’t know the real reason that he wants her to take a break from the FBI for awhile, but there has to be some ulterior motive.
I’m very glad that by the end of the episode she decided not to go through with the adoption. However, it seemed like everything that happened in this episode (a little too conveniently) perfectly addressed and affirmed all of her qualms about this adoption, even if she didn’t have any to begin with. Of course, that’s why Red picked this case in the first place. He knew all these issues would come up, and would help her realize that she still has doubts about Tom, and that she couldn’t go through with this adoption. I wish we could get more of a sense of who Tom works for. It seems that Red knows. But if Tom is so dangerous, why doesn’t he just tell Keen who Tom is, rather than dropping hints all the time that Tom isn’t who he claims to be? I guess maybe Tom is in such deep cover that any investigating Keen would do to verify what Red tells her would still point to him being clean? I don’t know, but I’m getting impatient about knowing what the deal with Tom is!
What about Jolene? It seems like whoever hired her (Red?) is getting their money’s worth, seeing that Tom ran to Jolene to talk after Keen called off the adoption. Not to mention that he ditched Keen to go to that art show with Jolene last episode. Granted, Keen was already late to dinner, and they were in a group setting rather than one-on-one, but it’s pretty obvious that something more is going to happen between Tom and Jolene soon. But if things go south between him and Keen, won’t that affect his work assignment? Will whoever he’s working for be upset?
Lastly, just as I suspected, Malik was not actually the mole. I didn’t know who was the mole though, and didn’t expect it to be Diane. There’s a lot more going on than we the audience are aware of, as far as government conspiracies go, which seems like we’ll slowly learn more about over time. Same goes for whatever happened “that night” with Red’s family. I’m thinking it will take more than this season to get more information about those things, while I’m hoping that we’ll know the answer to who Tom is by the end of this season, since he’s only one small part to the bigger picture.
Although I’m quite invested in this show, it still bothers me how Keen (along with the rest of her FBI team) can overlook such obvious things, and have to go to Red for help with those things. But apparently that’s going to have to happen every episode. By now, it’s just a minor annoyance to an overall good show, and it’s not going to stop me from watching.
Scenes from The Blacklist, Season 1 Episode 14: Madeline Pratt
Here are scenes from the next episode of The Blacklist, titled Madeline Pratt:
What did you think of Season 1 Episode 13 of The Blacklist, titled The Cyprus Agency? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
